from allmusic
Chinese Rocks
Few other rock musicians have ever danced on the edge of drug oblivion for as long and hard as Johnny Thunders did. The theme of hard drugs (namely heroin) cropped up time and time again in Thunders' music, perhaps never more evident than in one of Thunders' best-known songs, "Chinese Rocks." While the song is pure Johnny Thunders -- ragged guitar riffs, an almost drunken vocal delivery, lots of attitude, etc. -- Thunders did not pen it. The song's main author was the Ramones' bassist Dee Dee Ramone. He set out to write a song that would out-do the Velvet Underground's "Heroin," as the song shed light on the grim and desperate life of a junkie (strangely, it was more comparable to another VU song, "I'm Waiting for the Man," rather than "Heroin"). Dee Dee supposedly wrote the song in Debbie Harry's apartment, but when he showed it to his Ramones bandmates, they rejected it since they didn't want any drug-based songs. Dee Dee then showed it to friend Richard Hell, who was in Johnny Thunders' band the Heartbreakers at the time. The Heartbreakers recorded it for their classic L.A.M.F. release (later reissued as L.A.M.F. Revisited), but, over the years, Thunders was erroneously assumed to be the song's author -- even though he had nothing to do with the song's creation.
